THE VISION OF DANTE.

Hell.

A

THE VISION OF DANTE.

Hell.

CANTO I.

Argument.

The writer, having lost his way in a gloomy forest, and being hindered by certain wild beasts from ascending a mountain, is met by Virgil, who promises to show him the punishments of Hell, and afterwards of Purgatory; and that he shall then be conducted by Beatrice into Paradise. He follows the Roman poet.

IN the midway of this our mortal life,

I found me in a gloomy wood, astray

Gone from the path direct and e'en to tell,
It were no easy task, how savage wild
That forest, how robust and rough its growth,
Which to remember 2 only, my dismay
Renews, in bitterness not far from death.
Yet, to discourse of what there good befel,
All else will I relate discover'd there.

How first I enter'd it I scarce can say,
Such sleepy dulness in that instant weigh'd
My senses down, when the true path I left;

But when a mountain's foot I reach'd, where closed
The valley that had pierced my heart with dread,
I look'd aloft, and saw his shoulders broad

1 In the midway.] That the era of the Poem is intended by these words to be fixed to the thirty-fifth year of the poet's age, A.D. 1300, will appear more plainly in Canto xxi., where that date is explicitly marked. In his Convito, human life is compared to an arch or bow, the highest point of which is, in those well framed by nature, at their thirty-fifth year. Opere di Dante, ediz. Ven. 8vo, 1793, t. 1. p. 195.

2 Which to remember.] Even when I remember I am afraid, and trembling taketh hold on my flesh." Job xxi. 6.

Already vested with that planet's beam,1
Who leads all wanderers safe through every way.

Then was a little respite to the fear,

That in my heart's recesses 2 deep had lain
All of that night, so pitifully past:

And as a man, with difficult short breath,
Forespent with toiling, 'scaped from sea to shore,
Turns to the perilous wide waste, and stands
At gaze; e'en so my spirit, that yet fail'd,
Struggling with terror, turn'd to view the straits
That none hath past and lived. My weary frame
After short pause recomforted, again

I journey'd on over that lonely steep,

The hinder foot still firmer.4 Scarce the ascent
Began, when, lo! a panther, nimble, light,
And cover'd with a speckled skin, appear'd;
Nor, when it saw me, vanish'd; rather strove
To check my onward going; that oft-times,
With purpose to retrace my steps, I turn'd.

The hour was morning's prime, and on his way
Aloft the sun ascended with those stars,

That with him rose when Love divine first moved
Those its fair works: so that with joyous hope
All things conspired to fill me, the gay skin

1 That planet's beam.] The sun.

2 My heart's recesses.] Nel lago del cuor. Lombardi cites an imitation of this by Redi in his Ditirambo:

I buon vini son quegli, che acquetano

Le procelle si fosche e rubelle,

Che nel lago del cuor l'anime inquietano.

3 Turns.] So in our Poet's second psalm:

Come colui, che andando per lo bosco,

Da spino punto, a quel si volge e guarda.

Even as one, in passing through a wood,

Pierced by a thorn, at which he turns and looks.

4 The hinder foot.] It is to be remembered, that in ascending a hill the weight of the body rests on the hinder foot.

5 A panther.] Pleasure or luxury.

6 With those stars.] The sun was in Aries, in which sign he supposes it to have begun its course at the creation.

The gay skin.] A late editor of the Divina Commedia, Signor Zotti, has spoken of the present translation as the only one that has rendered this passage rightly but Mr. Hayley had shown me the way, in his very skilful version of the first three Cantos of the Inferno, inserted in the notes to his Essay on Epic Poetry:

:

I now was raised to hope sublime

By these bright omens of my fate benign,

The beauteous beast and the sweet hour of prim

All the commentators, whom I have seen, understand our Poet to say that the season of the year and the hour of the day induced him to hope for the gay